SoftBank Latin America is certainly having big exits, but not the lucrative kind.
Paulo Passoni and Shu Nyatta, SoftBank’s two Latin American managing investment partners, are leaving the company to start their own businesses. According to Passoni’s LinkedIn post, Nyatta and he are “now moving towards achieving our own dreams. In our own way. With our own culture. ”
The duo’s departure comes just a week after SoftBank announced that they will come back early stage of Latin America into an independent company Upload Ventures. The new entity has seen managing partners Rodrigo Baer and Marco Camhaji, who were hired by SoftBank in 2021, leave to run their own operations.
Now Nyatta and Passoni are doing the same. In just a few weeks, four of SoftBank’s managing partners left the Japanese conglomerate to work for their own companies. Additionally, COO Marcelo Claure, a native of Bolivia who led SoftBank’s efforts in Latin America, left the company because of a compensation dispute just a few months ago.
Notably, Nyatta is not only involved in SoftBank’s LatAm efforts, but in recent months he has led SoftBank Opportunity Fund for underrepresented founders, which Claure has also spearheaded. Nyatta took over the role after Claure stepped down following what was reported to be months of negotiations ending 2 billion dollars he believes he is in debt.
Going forward, it is unclear who will take the helm of the opportunity fund; SoftBank declined to answer questions about who will manage the strategy in Nyatta’s absence. It also did not address questions about whether SoftBank, which has shifted gears, said in 2020 that it was committing $100 million to the strategy, then announced last year that it was operating opportunity fund as an ‘evergreen’ vehicle – will get more funding. from costume.
As for Nyatta and Passoni’s new company, fundraising is expected in the coming months. The duo clearly have experience investing in historically overlooked founders in the LatAm region, so an ongoing focus would feel appropriate.
Passoni continued in her blog post: “I am extremely grateful to Masa and SoftBank Investment Advisers for the wonderful opportunity to redraw the contours of the venture and Latin American growth over the past 3 years. “I received the greatest gift of them all: I learned in 3 years what would take me to 10 anywhere else in the world.”
Alex Szapiro and Juan Franck will lead SoftBank Latin America after these departures.
